Session 2
Synophsis A stranger comes to town. Plot Christine transforms and lands to the ground. She looks about her, and sees nothing. With precious time being wasted, she looks about her for any sort of person to help her. She finds Martin and Draven walking together, and tells them of the ongoing situation. They immediately rush off and try and find the assailant before he can do anything. Unfortunately, they are a tad bit too late. Multiple times, Martin and Christine come upon images of various townspeople lying in their beds, brutally butchered. They hear an occasional scream in the night, but are always just too late. Martin, however, hears a dog barking with his druidic powers, and rushes off to find it. He comes across the aforementioned house, and pounds up the stairs. Unfortunately, the assailant is waiting for him at the top of the stairs, and Martin finds himself falling down the stairs. Meanwhile, Christine has flown over to the inn, where she tries and galvanize the town into action. She finds Jeb and tells him of the assailant, and the two of them rush off back into the town, though not before finding a minotaur with a warning horn. Martin finds himself with a broken ankle, but he attempts to shamble up the stairs nevertheless. Of course, the assailant meets him at the top of the stairs again, and tries to stab him. Martin manages to wrestle him off a little bit, and the two fall down the stairs together. Martin's injury is only exacerbated by this. The assailant moves to slit Martin's throat, but Draven suddenly smashes through the wall, and rushes to his aid. The assailant leaps away, though it did not seem to really matter, considering how Draven trips and fell flat on his face. Soon, Christine the Badass arrives on the scene. More hijinks ensue, and the assailant manages to kill more townfolk. Eventually, he finds himself cornered in one of his many victim's houses. However, as Draven, Christine, and Martin surround him, he goes invisible, and escapes. Before he can get too far away, Christine uses her Avenger powers to latch onto him, teleporting to his location in the backyard. Shocked, the assailant turns to fight her, but he is quickly overpowered by her superior fighting ability. Martin casts an ensnaring vine to slow down the assailant, but he yet again goes invisible. The fight finally ends in the middle of the town, as Christine once again teleports to the assailant's location. He offers some resistance, but it is not enough, and she finishes him off by blasting his head to pieces with a magical blast. She immediately goes to tell the town's mayor about what just went down, while Martin takes the assailant's amulet to the wizard store to be analyzed. Martin and the wizard, a young half-orc by the name of Braum, hit it up well together, and the two delve deep into the magics of the amulet. Braum manages to exorcise the spirit held within the amulet, which is discovered to be an extremely powerful demonic entity. They attempt to talk with it, but it merely laughs at them and then disappears in a flash of light. The inside of Braum's house is nearly destroyed in the process. Christine speaks with the mayor, a high-elven old timing adventurer named Soraka, who seems to take the news of the town's massacre with a stiff upper lip. Come the dawn, she addresses the town's remaining residents in a stunning, heartfelt, inspiring, and touching speech which I can't remember at all. She assigns a burial detachment to put the bodies to rest in the ground. Martin and Braum meet with Christine and they go to visit with Soraka. She maintains her calm and cool demeanor as she serves them tea. It is discovered through their conversation that Soraka used to have a partner, though he is "gone". Soraka, while very calm and measured, delivers a mission to the three: go to the ritual site from the night before and... eliminate the problem. The three go to collect Draven and Jeb from the inn, who agree to the mission with no qualms. Braum, however, begins to start acting odd. He suffers from convulsions, cold sweats, and looks panicked. He asks for some air, and Christine follows him out. He dismisses her concerns, but she sneaks after him in raven form and discovers him hyperventilating in an alley. He staggers off, and Christine is unable to follow him due to the departure of the expedition. The four go out into the forest and banter back and forth. Soon, they are ambushed by a group of goblins, who they dispatch with relative ease. Draven uses a wooden stick he finds to fight, the goblins miss again and again, and the whole thing is just one big mess that has become notorious for how awful of a combat it was (ahem). The session comes to a close with the arrival of the group at the site of the ritual from the night before, where they find the symbol of a green hand emblazoned upon the ground surrounded by dead grass and dirt. (June 21st-June 22nd, 443)